“Siya and Rachel are getting divorced!” exclaims Caroline, as I hand her her morning tea in bed. No “Good morning my love”, no “How was your walk with the dog”, no “This is what I dreamt last night” (my wife’s favourite morning opening salvo). The Geldenhuys household, much like most of the nation, was to contemplate this sad and bad news while we got the kids dressed, prepared for school and revved up for our own workday.
And it is very bad news, indeed. I’m very sorry for them – no marriage is a picnic, an interracial marriage even harder, an interracial marriage where he is an international icon and she is a productive and highly visible philanthropic influencer and businesswoman… man, the public scrutiny, the pressure to be perfect… it can’t be easy. So we all feel bad for the Kolisis, and I wish them well in navigating this tough process.
I’m also worried about our team.
I don’t, for one second, doubt that Siya will continue to give it his all for the Springboks. Being divorced shouldn’t really hamper his short-term ability to perform on the field. His coach and mentor, Rassie Erasmus, has been living on bachelor island all year after quietly splitting from his wife in April of this year, and the Springboks have continued to be awesome. As humans, they will continue to be pros and give it their all for their country. Siya’s teammates will stand by him, and the country will get over the disappointment… as long as the team keeps on winning. If current trends continue, a lot of those wins will be by the finest of margins, and often we would get the 50/50 refereeing calls go our way. Those calls, of course, are directly correlated to the way the refs view our team… and, by proxy, our captain.
In his book, Siya talks about how Rassie came in and stated the primary objectives: Results first, transformation… and public perception. If you paid close attention, you would have seen how Rassie has built an irresistible narrative around the team and Siya’s own story. A story of no-hopers grabbing the ultimate prize, a story of transcending your circumstances through hard work and mentorship and humility and the solid love of a good woman. In order to shift public perception, they needed to turn the Springboks from rugby’s bad boys to rugby’s golden boys. And with Siya leading the charge, they did it.
In South Africa, people – not just white people – now really care about the Springboks. Internationally, we are respected and lauded as deserving world champions. And in the officiating arena, we can all agree that the bad old days of refs “picking” on us are long gone. Because, you know. How can you pick on Siya? The dude is everything that is good and wholesome about who we all want to be.
Well, he was. These days, I see embers of Dennis Rodman moonlighting at the wrestling (Siya did a cameo at the UFC title fight to support our man Dricus) and the immediate allegations from random other women have a very Tiger Woods-ish ring to it…
The press is going to have a field day. And if there is suddenly a torrent of confessions and revelations of philandering and bad behaviour from attention-seeking females… it wouldn’t be unexpected. We love to tear down our idols, and in the social media age, anyone can set up a merch shop off someone else’s personal disaster.
And in the meantime, when Siya now walks onto the pitch, the opposition hecklers are going to have some fresh ammo to get a rise out of him. To get him to lose his cool, to get him to show his humanity. If this thing turns into a media-feeding frenzy, it will be global. And even the referees won’t be able to ignore the noise around the guy… and maybe, just maybe, their view of him won’t be as rose-tinted as it was before.
This is indeed very bad news. My book on the Springboks and business is coming out in November, and I explore the way we build up an iconic story and how it has served the Springboks in the chapter on Quest. But heroes inevitably face a fall. Siya still has a few good years of play left in him, but will he still be good enough for the next World Cup? Can the coach afford to take that chance, knowing that his ageing captain might have lost a step on the pitch… but more importantly, his ability to engage the stakeholders might also be significantly diminished from this point on?
It's the toughest of calls. You can’t desert your man now, not at his lowest point. And neither should you. But his utility as captain and talisman, and the role he needs to play in the team, has ever so slightly shifted this week. Rassie will know more by the end of this year, but I am reminded of Rassie’s primary driver from Chasing the Sun: Let the number 1 thing be the number 1 thing. Siya 2024 sure does come with a lot of distractions.
PG’s Pro Tip:
With your senior team, make sure roles, responsibilities and core competencies are clear and agreed upon. And if the person, for whatever reason, is no longer able to fulfil their role, have the courage to have a critical conversation sooner rather than later. If whatever is holding them back isn’t fixable, you need to start discussing alternatives…
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